Negros, mulatos, esclavos y libertos en la Costa Rica del siglo XVII (review)

In a vivid, smooth, and engaging analysis, Rina Cáceres explores the condition of the black population in Costa Rica from the first moments of European contact. While the focus of her award-winning study is on the seventeenth century, she briefly assesses the demographic presence of blacks and mulattos into the opening decades of the nineteenth century. We learn that while the Afro–Costa Rican population never approached the levels seen elsewhere in the New World, by the 1770s, their numbers were sufficiently large that they may have equaled the number of whites in the colony. By 1800, they may have even surpassed the numbers of both the white and the indigenous population sectors.

One of Cáceres's primary concerns is to provide a context for understanding the changing demographic profile of the eighteenth century. She centers her inquiry on the following question: given the dramatic growth of the black populace in the eighteenth century, is it correct to attribute the population boom to a major shift in the Costa Rican economy, particularly the advent of cacao cultivation? In other words, were blacks mainly brought to Costa Rica to perform labor on cacao estates? Certainly, the limited historiography on the subject supports this conclusion; however, Cáceres believes that such an interpretation diminishes our understanding of the full involvement of blacks in colonial Costa Rican society. Using an array of primary sources from Costa Rica's National Archives and from the León Fernández and Richard Konetzke collections, Cáceres proceeds to study in detail the types of transactions in which slaves appeared in the seventeenth century. Furthermore, she uses these same repositories to explore the multifaceted lives of Costa Rica's free-colored population, including its tribute responsibilities and its involvement in the militias, confraternities, and artisan professions and in the arena of domestic service. The result is the most complete study to date on the black population of colonial Costa Rica.

The book is structurally divided into three sections. The first part locates Costa Rica within the broader seventeenth-century world. Here, we are able to appreciate the sluggish tempo of the Costa Rican economy in light of the "general crisis" of the seventeenth century. We walk through the evolution of the region's fiscal development, from being initially based upon tribute exports to being based upon farming and animal husbandry. Finally, we witness the impact of the introduction of cacao. This section also carefully explains the world of indigenous labor and tribute systems as well as the significance of the autonomous townships (pueblos de indios). Additionally, we survey the military organization of Costa Rican society while retracing the steps of the early Spanish explorers and landowners (encomenderos). In short, this section provides a crucial and well-crafted overview of Costa Rican history, but at the same time, it is difficult to extract the meaning of these historical processes for the evolution of Costa Rica's black population.

The second and third sections concentrate almost exclusively on Afro–Costa Ricans, beginning with the experience of slavery. Indeed, these sections comprise the core of the book. It is here that Cáceres surveys slave-pricing structures and assesses the multiple uses of slaves in Costa Rican society. Importantly, we learn that slaves steadily increased their presence throughout the course of the seventeenth century and were not simply valued as laborers. They performed a vital economic function for the elite, serving as a substitute for cash in a fiscal environment where liquidity was hard to come by. Moreover, slaves were not just exchanged on the auction block, they were also distributed amongst the elite through dowries, wills, and testaments. Of course, this is nothing new in the colonial world—slaves were circulated in this fashion throughout the Americas...